[from the day’s front page]

◊

But many in Vilnius shocked as official Jewish Community website posts the statement with no comment (in English translation with “God’s honest truth” headline (PDF) following the initial Lithuanian report; But mishap could be editor’s error or work of local “mischief maker”. Simon Wiesenthal Center responds. Report in the Jerusalem Post. Jewish Community leadership then replied to critics.

 Then, community chairperson Faina Kukliansky dramatically changed course and responded to the Genocide Center, offering a bold and  historically important conclusion about “Holocaust education” in the midst of such distortion by the state’s own research center: “In these sorts of circumstances it is impossible to talk about the existence of Holocaust education.”  DH report. BNS  report.  Amit Belaite, Jewish student leader, leads small protest at one of the Noreika shrines in Vilnius.

Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas on Jonas Noreika’s Holocaust Involvement

Genocide Center’s pronouncement is reaction to last summer’s calls for removal of city center honors for the collaborator. See article by Rimvydas Valatka; English articles by Grant Arthur Gochin and Sergey Kanovich, and summary by Evaldas Balčiūnas. But petition to mayor from group of intellectuals has stayed “secret”. Meantime, some local media regards the very discussion as “a Russian plot”…

SEE DEFENDING HISTORY PAGE AND SECTION ON HONORS FOR PERPETRATORS